‘The Great Doubling’ helps explain why jobs are so hard to find

Why is the job market so tough? The answers are as numerous as the people looking without success in the worst job market since the Great Depression.

But Harvard University economist Richard Freeman paints the big picture that helps explain some of the pain being felt today — the world’s workforce has effectively doubled in the last decade, and a global readjustment of labor and capital is now underway.

Freeman has written scholarly articles in which he describes how China, India and the former Soviet bloc nations began entering the global economy in the 1990s, setting economic waves in motion that continue to adjust the worldwide balance between labor and capital. He writes:

This change greatly increased the size of the global labor pool from approximately 1.46 billion workers to 2.93 billion workers . . . I have called this ‘The Great Doubling’ . . . What impact might the doubling of the global work force have on workers? . . . You don’t need an economics PhD to see that this would be good for employers but terrible for workers.

Freeman has written a great deal on the subject and its ramifications but the quick takeaway for today’s job hunter is that it’s not your imagination. Things are tough. But there’s nothing to do but redouble your efforts and cut your expenses because this is a wave you can’t outrun.